THE first anniversary of the death of the Queen — it’s still hard to refer to her as Elizabeth II — is a sombre moment for us as well as for the King and his family. After a 70-year reign, she was part of the backdrop to our lives, an element of continuity in a rapidly changing world. The values she embodied — of service, duty, reticence and the subordination of self to the wider good — are not entirely those of our age, but looking back on her life, a year after her death, they seem no less valuable than ever.
The striking aspect of the sorrow that followed her death was that it was shared by people across the social, ethnic and generational spectrum. Those who paid tribute to her came from an extraordinary diversity of backgrounds, and they all recognised an authenticity in her ethos of service. She embodied a generation, for she was almost the last of those who served in the crisis of the war years. Now, on her anniversary, it is an opportunity to reflect in gratitude on her life, lived out in obedience to her Christian values, which formed her. She remains inspirational. We mourn her, but we also learned something valuable from her life.
